Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Eric Kandel Joins NeuroFocus Advisory Board

BERKELEY, Calif., March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- NeuroFocus, the world's leading neuromarketing company, announced today that Nobel Prize laureate Eric R. Kandel, M.D., has joined its Advisory Board. Dr. Kandel is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for his seminal contributions to the field of neuroscience. Specifically, he was recognized with this top honor for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons.

Dr. Kandel serves as University Professor of Physiology and Cell Biophysics, Psychiatry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University. He was the founding Director of the University's Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In addition, Dr. Kandel is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute senior investigator and is a member of the National Academy of Science.

"NeuroFocus is greatly honored by Dr. Kandel's presence on our Advisory Board, and we and our clients look forward to benefitting from his unsurpassed knowledge in the neuroscience field," said Dr. A. K. Pradeep, Chief Executive Officer of NeuroFocus.

Dr. Kandel's groundbreaking research into the molecular basis of higher cognitive functions has been central in discovering that learning produces changes in behavior by adjusting the strength of particular connections between nerve cells. These discoveries of how cellular and molecular mechanisms contribute to learning and memory storage have provided key insights into learned behavior with immense implications for understanding human cognitive function in health and disease.

He joins a constellation of other world-renowned experts in neuroscience and business on NeuroFocus' Advisory Board, including Robert Knight, M.D., Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and a Humboldt Prize winner in Neurobiology. Other Board members include Dr.'s Gerald Zaltman, Stephen Kosslyn, and Rajiv Lal of Harvard University; Earl Miller, Ph.D., Picower Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ravi Parmeswar, Managing Director, Global Consumer & Marketplace Insights & Client Advocacy at Citi;  Hans-Jochen Heinze, M.D., Director of the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology and the Department for Behavorial Neurology, in Magdeburg Germany; Anna Christina Nobre, Ph.D., Director of Brain & Cognition Laboratory and the Centre for Real-Time Brain Imaging at the University of Oxford in England; Leon Deouell, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University; Mark D'Esposito, M.D., Professor of Neuroscience and Chief Editor of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the pre-eminent journal in human brain research; Barry Herstein, general manager North America and chief marketing officer for PayPal, and Dr. Adam Gazzaley, director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Kandel is widely recognized and critically praised for the textbooks he has helped write such as Principles of Neural Science, which is regarded as the standard in the field. His autobiography, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Award, recounts his remarkable life and career achievements. His other books include Cellular Basis of Behavior: An Introduction to Behavioral Neurobiology, plus Behavioral Biology of Aplysia: A Contribution to the Comparative Study of Opisthobranch Molluscs; Molecular Neurobiology in Neurology and Psychiatry; and Memory: From Mind to Molecules (with Larry R. Squire).

Among many other awards, Dr. Kandel has been honored with the National Medal of Science; the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award; the Gairdner International Award for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Science; the Wolf Prize; and the Heineken Prize. He is also the recipient of eighteen honorary degrees.

A graduate of Harvard College and New York University's School of Medicine, Dr. Kandel trained in Neurobiology at the National Institutes of Health and in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In 1974 he joined the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where he organized the neuroscience curriculum and became the founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior the following year.

About NeuroFocus

NeuroFocus (http://neurofocus.com) brings advanced neuroscience knowledge and expertise to the worlds of branding, product development and packaging, advertising, in-store marketing, and entertainment. NeuroFocus clients include Fortune 100 companies across dozens of categories, including automotive, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, financial services, Internet, pharmaceutical, retail, and many more sectors. Entertainment category clients include major companies in the broadcast and cable television and motion picture industries.

The company leverages Doctorate-level academic credentials in neuroscience and marketing from the University of California at Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Oxford, and other leading institutions, combined with executive business management and consulting experience. The Nielsen Company is a strategic investor in NeuroFocus.

SOURCE NeuroFocus